Nov 30, 2004

Results. Emailing a bunch of designer friends for advice yesterday brought back an interesting (and unexpected) result: Looks like I'm steering towards the Epson instead of the Canon printer. This is a surprise to me, as my last experience with Epson printers had me at the teetering brink of suicide. However, the 1280 looks to be discontinued, and the 2200 is a bit pricey.

A nice man came to the house and crawled all over the roof at 7am yesterday morning; he claims to have fixed our current roof leak problems and to have replaced about 30 slates; he also mentioned that the roof is getting old, that there's no easy repair for our ice guards, and that the fascia board along the back of the house is coming off, slowly taking the gutter with it. (Cue sound: buckets of money hurled out the window.)

As if the malware, pagefile, and general lousy computer issues I'm having weren't enough, the breaker on my side of this building is tripping because there are too many computers on at one time. So until further notice, I'm taking my iTunes server offline and going home. Nyah, nyah. | link

Nov 29, 2004

The Wrap-Up. I'm sitting here at work, silently thankful for forgetting my leftovers at home, because if I eat any more stuffing, gravy, or yams, I will explode in a cloud of turkey-scented goo. Our weekend was fun, exhausting, comfortable, and relaxing at the same time. After inhaling the feast (and killing the last four bottles of white wine left from the wedding), we laid around and watched football. Friday we split off into three groups—my Mom and sister headed out to Ellicott City to shop, my father and I went to check out the B&O Railroad Museum, and Jen crashed out upstairs, trying to recover from a chest cold.

The B&O Museum has come a long way since my Dad and I saw it last. We crawled around the engines in the parking lot about five years ago one Sunday when the museum was closed, but the closest I've been to the exhibits inside have been drunken paper shows held by the AIGA where I was more concerned with remembering names than looking at locomotives. Last year, the dome over the roundhouse collapsed under the weight of a heavy snowfall, and I think it may have been one of the best things to happen for the museum (damage to some of the priceless exhibits notwithstanding.) They've taken the opportunity to expand the whole facility, redesign the interior layout, and add staff. We were surprised to find a long line outside the front doors, packed with young children waiting to see Santa and the model trains. There's a food concession stand, new model exhibits on extended loan from the Smithsonian, and several newly refurbished engines sitting outside the work shed (which will be open in 2005.) I've not seen my father's eyes that wide in a long time. Saturday we made the Annual Pilgrimage To The Shrine Of Inexpensive Swedish Furniture, and later hit Home Anthology to wade through the midcentury modern goodness. All in all, it was a very good visit.

Plug. We had the good fortune to catch The Shipping News on AMC last night—if you get a chance, check it out. It's a quiet, slower-paced movie, but rewarding and entertaining. From the director who brought you Chocolat.

Advice.I'm thinking about taking some current freelance cash and finally getting a large-format color printer for the office; I'm leaning towards a Canon but put off by the $500 price for an inkjet. Anybody have one they can recommend?

Holy Fucking God, does Windows XP "Professional" suck donkey balls. I've had it running for three weeks and it's the buggiest, crashingest, most spyware-infected, slowest piece of shit I've used since Windows 3.1. | link

Nov 27, 2004

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum, 11.26.04. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. | link

Nov 24, 2004

Current Favorite App: Ourtunes. Java-based download client for iTunes. Hee hee. | Sending and receiving faxes with OSX. Good to know-especially the receiving part. | link

Nov 23, 2004

Dave, Part Two. Dave did indeed save Thanksgiving; stopping over last night with Clifford, we traded the world's most industrial-looking table saw for the impossibly low price of two hefeweizens. Besides being the heaviest saw I've ever carried, it has that rounded, metallic 1950's charm and a lack of any safety features (which is not that big a deal—the safety cover was off the Delta at least 50% of the time to accomodate the cut) but the motor is badged General Electric, runs very smooth, and has a carbide woodworking blade. So, barring any disasters, I'll be milling the trimwork for the dining room tonight, and still have money to change the oil in the Jeep. Thanks again, Dave. | link

Nov 22, 2004

Dave Saves Thanksgiving Dept. Many big ups to Dave for offering the use of his table saw. You may be wondering why it's so consarned important to me to get this built: it could have something to do with the fact that the window on the north wall of the dining room looks hideous when compared to the other one, and all the work we've put into the room doesn't look finished without it.

Because I Absolutely Love Things Like This... New York Changing, a book with before/after shots of New York City, in what looks to be meticulous recreation of photo angle, position, and time of day. Fascinating. | link

Nov 21, 2004

The visit to Pax River was good. We visited with Mrs. Lockard for the afternoon, and she was better off than I was hoping. She was mentally sharper than I've seen her in a long time, even if she's physically weaker. We took her out for an early dinner, and hopefully brightened an otherwise dreary Saturday afternoon. I really hope we're able to celebrate the holidays with her and show her a good time. Of course, the Ghost of Dysfunctional Christmas is standing between us and those plans, but we'll have to deal with that when it comes.

Hard On My Toys. I've had a Delta table saw for about the past five years. I bought it at a time when I didn't have outrageous amounts of money, but decided that using a handheld circular saw to rip 10' boards lentghwise was getting to be tiresome. I went out to the Home Depot to browse, and after half an hour of looking through the field, I selected the best American-made unit I could find for under $150. Since then, I've ripped a couple miles of board-feet between two houses' worth of projects. During that time I found that the saw had a number of shortcomings (cheap fittings, a very wobbly motor, few allowances for attachments, a small fence) and only a few pluses, but I was able to jury-rig it enough to get it to work for me.

This past week, I've hustled to finish a bunch of outstanding projects so that I could get to one that I was looking forward to: finish carpentry around the front window in the dining room. I bought some very clean, expensive wood for the trim (the good stuff is hard to find) and had just begin to rip the sill to size when the saw cut out. I unplugged it, applied Dugan's Second Law Of Fixing Stuff (unbolted the motor, took it apart and put it back together) and got another five seconds of juice out of it before the whole thing died in a puff of ozone.

Add this to the Skilsaw circular I burned out milling the door down this spring and that makes two expensive tools I've killed this year. It's not like I've been throwing these things off the roof or leaving them in the rain; this is everyday use we're talking about. I think I'm going to have to stick with the brands I trust at this point—A DeWalt cordless that actually has fallen off a roof and continues to work flawlessly; a Makita circular that's followed me through two years of High School setbuilding, four years of college, and two houses; a Porter Cable sander that's touched every woodworking project I've done; and a Craftsman ¾" drill that's older than I am and deserves a new set of bearings.

I always wanted to buy the best tools I could afford and have them for the rest of my life, and this is one of those times when a compromise burned me. And the killer is that I don't have the cash to buy that beautiful DeWalt replacement I saw last month. I can't say that the Delta owes me anything, but I'm probably going to have to buy another 5-year saw and kill it as well. | link

Nov 19, 2004

The Plan. Tomorrow Jen and I are driving south to share a preliminary Thanksgiving with her folks. As you may have read, her Mom is not doing as well as we had hoped—things are looking kind of grim, really. I think she (Jen) is handling this admirably, given the circumstances and history. Since the wedding, we've been trying to toe the line between our own sanity and keeping close by for the "in case" we know is coming. I'm feeling guilty, on reflection, for the amount of time I've not spent with her family since the wedding, but I think we both needed some time by ourselves to cement our little family unit in preparation for this eventuality. As always, we're hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

Sunday we continue the preparations for Turkey Day in Catonsville, which will involve much food preparation, cleaning, some finish work upstairs, cleaning, and then some beers.

Bookmark This. Hack your way out of writer's block. Words to live by. | link

Nov 18, 2004

Time Machine. Last summer we were privleged to have a houseful of idiot frat-boys renting the house across the street from ours. At all hours of the day and night we got to hear drunken arguments between couples, fart-can burnouts from Fast And The Furious wannabes, motocross races on the front lawn, and parties until five in the morning. (These complaints courtesy of the man who used to blow out TV picture tubes with a baseball bat at 11pm in his rental backyard for kicks. Oh, how the tables have turned.) The lawn was mowed bimonthly, the driveway was jammed full of cars, and the gutter that blew halfway off during Isabel stayed stranded on the front lawn for four months. We cursed the owner for being such a lousy landlord, and had no way of contacting him to complain.

This morning I crossed the street with a camera and a cup of coffee to meet the owner, who led me into the cluttered garage to look at a pile of parts bungeed to the near wall: the front clip of the MGA, a transmission standing on its flywheel, various boxes of rubber and chrome parts laying on a leaning steel shelf, rusty wire wheels stacked next to a pair of old motorcycles. I was told the engine is in Columbia. As he pulled apart the jumbled parts to show me specific items, I recalled browsing the internet last night for information. I happened upon a great MGA site with a ton of excellent advice on buying and restoring old British iron, and one paragraph struck me. The author mentioned that actually putting the body and the frame right is relatively easy—if you have an eye for detail, the bodywork really isn't that bad (just time-consuming, provided you have a MIG welder), and the running gear is always the easiest stuff to have fixed. It's when the time comes to buy the chrome, trim, and leather to finish off the car that 50% or more of the total project price is spent.

Which, when I thought about it, made a lot of sense.

Given that the chrome I saw was very bad, and the rest of the finish was scattered around the garage in boxes and cans (and the frame was rusted, the nosecone looked like shit, the engine was in Columbia, etc.,) I decided I'd pass on this one as well. I didn't even bother to take a picture to show you. | link

Nov 17, 2004

Visit. Going to see the MGA , tonight, if I can swing it tomorrow morning. Note: The seller lives across the street. Boy, am I stupid.

Rant. I Hate Adobe Acrobat Distiller. I wish it would explode into flames and die. Followed by Quark Xpress. | link

Nov 16, 2004

Hmmm. Browsing the internet at lunch today after a hugely busy morning, I found a fellow selling a disassembled 1960 MGA in Catonsville. I sent the link to Jen and she called me back to say "That's pretty!" but that she didn't want it if it wasn't put together. I'm going to see if I can look at it tonight anyway. | link

Nov 15, 2004

Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Jen and I marshalled all our strength this weekend and made a major push to finish up about thirty projects around the house. In no particular order, we got these accomplished:

• The linen closet is finished. The door is hung, shelves installed, trim painted, and towels, bedding and excess bathroom stuff is stored neatly inside. Still to finish: finding a new carriage bolt for the antique glass knob I found in my "from-the-old-house" drawer.
• The guest room is finished. The color is on the walls, the new roman shades are hung, there's art on the walls, and with the exception of a small section of cap molding, it's all ready for guests.
• The bathroom has been reconfigured, cleaned up, and looks twice as big. Jen's next job is to strip the ugly border from around the cieling.
• The Summer Work Staging Area, AKA the huge pile of tools in the atrium, has been relocated to the basement, and
• All our outside plants are repotted and living happily in the atrium.

There's a bunch of other crap we accomplished, but it's too boring to list here. I'll post pictures of each room after Thanksgiving, when we do the big reveal While-You-Were-Out style. Other weekend highlights: Dropping one of the new pictures on the radiator and exchanging it for a new one at Target (me), peering at Jen's sinus cavity CAT scans on our very own X-ray light; trying out a Chipotle burrito for the first time (synopsis: decent food, lousy menu—burrito, burrito, or...burrito?); getting Penn the Medicated out of his little house and down into the living room, where he tried to EAT THE ENTIRE SCRATCHING PAD, which was covered in catnip; visiting Stellan Heazlett and giving him his Kong In a Thong (he was unimpressed); and visiting a nursery bankruptcy sale and finding two plastic potting tables for sale at $45/ea.

Shame On A Nuh. Our friend Dave, an old college buddy, once bought an album from the Wal-Mart, that wonderful retailer that considers it its civic duty to censor albums it deems offensive. This album was the mighty debut from the Wu-Tang Clan, and he would drive around Baltimore with the album in his car, rapping along with the lyrics. It was a few years later, with great surprise, he learned that the lyrics had been altered by the Megalo-Mart to remove the racial slur, replacing it with a more "palatable" nonsense word. For years, he'd been quoting the Middle-America approved alternative. R.I.P., Dirt McGurk. | link

Nov 12, 2004

Busy. I wish I could claim that I spent my vacation day away from the computer, but I didn't. Between a new freelance project and the house, I spent much of my day running from the basement, where I built a custom ripping jig for the table saw, to the office, where I was building a presentation for the client. Both projects were fruitful, though—the medicine cabinet door is now officially hung, and the client gets version 1.0 of the presentation at lunchtime for review. I also took time to finish cleaning up the paint job in the guest room and continued cleaning the paste off the walls in the hallway. Jen and I are enjoying the "Tuscan" effect of the stripped plaster out there—it's oddly satisfying in a postmodern design sort of way.

Penn, Day Two. The Prozac seems to have calmed the guy down somewhat. He's a lot mellower, and only talking when he's really hungry.

Change Of Heart. For the past four or five weeks, while I've been building 3-D models, I'm very happy here at work. Which is a very, very satisfying feeling. | link

Nov 11, 2004

Third Time's The Charm. Our troubled orange tabby, Penn, has been dealing with anxiety issues ever since we joined the two kingdoms. He manifests his insecurities by attacking pretty much every other cat in the house, saving his special love for Geneva, the female. So we've had him on medication since before the wedding, and trapped in the rear atrium room away from the other cats. The first medication he was put on was Diazo-trypto something, and it made him very stoney for the first two days, then reduced his white-hot anger to a dull crank. He was mellower but still itching to bite Geneva whenever he could. With a change in doctors, a checkup, and a new prescription, we thought things might turn around for the guy. He was lonely and sad in his little castle, scratching at the window and making pitiful requests for love. The second meds (Ela-something) did nothing but dull his senses for three seconds—he burned through that stuff like a Twinkie on a hot day, and seemed more eager than ever to get into some ass-whuppin'. Today I picked up the third prescription for the little terror (he reached out and clawed the face of our new cat doctor on his first visit, the only time I've ever seen him attack a human)—the big gun, Prozac. Thankfully it's generic, it's a smaller dose, and it's not harmful to the liver like kitty Valium, which is our last and final resort. So say a prayer tonight for Mr. Penn, and let's all hope he calms the hell down.

Nice. This is a beautiful series of maps drawn to illustrate how misleading some of those election result maps were when they flashed them onscreen last week. I'm sure Tufte could get a whole new lecture series out of this subject, like PowerPoint.

Happiness Is. My wife calling me out of the blue to tell me she loves me.

Sadness Is. The "Check Engine" light on the Jeep lighting up this morning. | link

Nov 9, 2004

Heh, heh. This is funny. (via matt)

Gulp. As you've read here earlier, Jen's Mom has been recovering from the side effects of chemotherapy for the last couple of months. Having walked right up to the edge of death a few months ago, she's not up to cooking, cleaning and getting ready for all five children to descend on the house in December. Jen's brother none-too-subtly suggested our house as an alternative, which was the unspoken understanding between Jen and I since July. Last night we got the official endorsement from the Boss, which means we're hosting the dysfunction on our own turf.

This is a good thing, because even though we will be running around like mental patients for the two weeks surrounding Christmas, we will be able to crush any dissent among the rabble, make other people do the dishes, and sleep in our own bed. (The time to upgrade the Full to a Queen is upon us.)

This weekend I took advantage of the freakish warm weather and mowed the lawn for the first time in about two months. It was looking like a shag rug under a spilled box of Wheaties after the tulip tree lost its leaves, and I was ignoring it for as long as I could. After I bagged up a bunch of next year's mulch, I grabbed a paint can and climbed out onto the roof above the atrium to paint the last street-viewable portion of white siding. Now, as far as you can tell, the whole house is blue. Meanwhile, Jen is making welcome additions to the guest bedroom—the whitewash has been covered by a cheery new color, we have designs on a rug, and it's beginning to come together. Meanwhile, the medicine cabinet door is still in progress. After deciding that the first placement of the hinges was wrong (the door opened only about 80°, which was less than optimal), I pulled them off, filled the mortises with wood filler, and got it ready for Plan B. Stay tuned.

"There is no underwater camera system that is right for everybody."

SSI Guide To Underwater Photography. Courtesy XLT. (I would have left this as a comment on his site, but Blogger's comment system sucks ass.) | link

Nov 8, 2004

Wow. Can I just tell you that Windows XP sucks? I want to go back to 2000.

Good Idea Dept. Adding to the to-do list from last week, I got inspired this morning and I've been looking for some information about what's best to send overseas to soldiers in Iraq, besides plane tickets or flak vests. I found this site, which looks to be bogged down right now, but a good resource of suggestions. What we don't already have (magazines, comic books) I'm going to set aside a budget for and try to get five packages out before Thanksgiving.

Right On. On Friday Todd hipped me to the trailer for The Life Aquatic, which looks like another great movie by Wes Anderson. Gonna have to see this one. (The trailer is worth the download just for the first thirty seconds. You'll see.) | link

Nov 5, 2004

Sigh. There's nothing like getting in some freelance checks and depositing them, even though you know the money was already spent two months ago.

Wishing Death. On the kind individual who keeps leaving WHOLE BOXES OF GIRL SCOUT COOKIES around my office. As if the bowls of leftover Halloween candy weren't enough of an issue, now you need to leave giant minefields of blood-sugar implosion in your wake. May your children stay up for three days straight on a Snickers binge. | link

Nov 4, 2004 - Anniversary #1

Four More Years. To Do list:

1. Donate money to the ACLU. They're gonna need it.
2. Contact the local Democratic party headquarters and volunteer.
3. Get involved more in local organizations and effect change from the inside.
4. Raise a family of pinko liberal hippie educated activist Democrats.
5. Make, pack, and send some care packages to soldiers serving in Iraq.

Any other suggestions? I'm all ears.

Props. Special shout-outs to the following people, whom I haven't mentioned but in passing the last few days:

• Renie, my sister, for driving six and a half hours to stand on a ladder and scrape the Oldest Wallpaper Known To Man from the plaster in our hallway. Hopefully, the lobster feast, trip to Peter's, homemade quiche and booze made it worthwhile.
• Dave, our good friend, who dropped by to haul away a pile of dry brush from our driveway on Tuesday, and who sat through an hour of our deepening depression as the election results came in. He could not be tempted with either pizza or Hefeweizen, so we owe him something special. Chewbacca thanks you, Dave.
• Molly, for the excellent T-shirt she sent over just in time for an anniversary present. Jen looked at it and laughed, and I suggested she wear it at Christmas. We'll see how that goes.

Updates. I went through the Lockardugan Photo Archive this morning to dig out a bunch of beginning photos of the house for comparison's sake. I'm going to be posting them over the next day or so as I get the time- there's a bunch of them. This should be interesting. | link

Nov 3, 2004

Weighing In. E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N R-E-F-O-R-M. Four more years of shite. Thanks a bunch, middle America. I'm glad, at least, that I live in a state that carried him. And, what's all this bullshit about "moral issues"? Who gives a crap about banning gay marriage when the economy is in the toilet and we're occupying a foreign country? Come on, people!

Ch-ch-ch-Changes. I moved the home page of this humble site over to a CSS-based design, meaning there's not a table to be found in it. Now, that's not that big a deal considering it's two images and an image map, but for some reason I can't get the CSS equivalent of the ol' <body align=center> tag to work correctly in Mozilla. (Nor, for that matter, do the popups in the design section work in Mozilla. Dammit.) The eventual goal is to have the whole damned thing in CSS, but that's a ways off. Baby steps here, baby steps.

This article, on surviving IKEA, is written just like a walkthrough to DOOM, circa 1998. It will make non-gamers laugh and gamers howl. I wish I had thought of it.

Progress. This morning Jen got up at 7 to shower, and I roused myself to find the TV remote for the bad news. It wasn't as bad as I'd hoped, but not the surprise I was praying for. Jen tried some new paint on the wall in the guest bedroom, and I made coffee, anxious to get outside and take advantage of the warm sunshine. I should back up and give props to Dave, who brought Clifford by and hauled off the pile of brush in the driveway I've been collecting since June. He helped clear the way for the car cover I bought from Sam's Club a few weeks ago, which I put up in about an hour. Unfortunately, the cover isn't rated for snow (a fact I couldn't find on the less-than-helpful website) but with some carefully made modifications, I think I can get around that. Also missing on the website: the fact that the tent does not come with tiedowns—although the instructions helpfully note, "Caution: Once you erect your tent, it WILL become a giant kite!" Lacking any tiedowns, I decided the next best thing would be attaching the cover to the closest 3200lb. weight I could find, so I jump-started the Scout off the Jeep, backed it under the cover, and tied off the center poles to the roof rack. The overall effect is very ghetto, but considering it's the first time Chewbacca has been under cover since 1998, I'm certainly happy. | link

Nov 2, 2004—Get out and vote.

10:45pm. Discouraged. I'm drinking every time Dan Rather busts out a Texas aphorism. Which means I'm ripped.

9:11pm. Nice to see a few things: Maryland went Democratic (no surprise there.) Barbara Mikulski looks like she's going to win. Barack Obama crushed Alan Keyes.

Black Helicopters Dept. I went and voted this morning after waiting a while for Jen come back from giving blood; she has some kind of mystery sickness thing and they sort of threw their hands up in the air and said, "We'll draw some blood", which means, we're stumped. We had romantic dreams of walking across the street hand-in-hand to vote the fascists out of office (actually, she had that dream, while mine was more like the Matrix, where I used the Crane Style Technique to clear a bloody path through the throngs of Bush supporters barring our way to the polls. It turned out that there were just four teenagers asking quietly, "Kerry for President?") I walked over by myself and after signing the card found myself in front of one of the Deibold machines. My misgivings have been documented before, and I can see where there could be a problem; the fact that my little voter credit card thing was about as insecure a device as a blank piece of paper did not lend a sense of trust. (You sign a paper, they give you a credit card. You walk to the machine, insert the card, cast your 'ballot', and the card pops out. You then hand the card to the dork with the "I Voted" stickers, and who the hell knows where your vote went.)

So, for better or worse, I cast my vote for the guy I believe in. Lord help us all.

Professional. I got an email from the VP of marketing at a T-shirt company this afternoon, with the subject "Looking for creative artist". Here is the body of the message, verbatim:

If you are interested in doing art please let me know

Now, I don't have any idea who this guy is, or what it's like "doing art" for him. Based on my previous experiences with T-shirt companies, there's no way in hell I'd ever send one a sketch, let alone attempt to do business with one. But this email makes me laugh. My website is reasonably professional; my work is generally good. How does this guy expect I'm going to react to an email this impersonal? I mean, his signature took up more space than the message. Get bent, buddy.

Humor. The quiet lakeside town my parents live in is going through some growing pains lately. Some folks bought a big house across the street from them, decided they didn't like the layout, and so picked it up and moved it off the property to an open lot, where it's sat up on blocks for a year. Some snarky individual decided to play a Halloween prank with it this year. | link

Nov 1, 2004

Work. A quick rundown, so I can get some work done: Renie came into town and helped us strip some wallpaper. I designed a tattoo for a friend of ours. Jen finished the dining room painting and we're almost done with the linen closet. We had about 20 kids for Halloween this year, an increase of 20%. Every muscle in my body aches. That is all.

Smile. Submitted to the Mirror Project last week. | link

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